Sega and Square. I believe that Square will be bought by someone within the next 2 years. Too many flops, mismanagement and odd decisions recently. Sony moneyhatted FF16 for 1 year and Forspoken for 2 years. I believe those are not the random numbers.
All WB studios are not that expensive - nobody wanted them for 4 bn, but if IP included then can go around 10 bn. Then again the rumour is “under 10 bn” so it can be anything from 5-10 bn.
The part of your message in bold isn’t correct.
What Wiki says:
The studio was formed in February 2010 as Zipline Studios, and under that name developed the Facebook game Relic Rescue. In May 2011, the studio was renamed Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver as it shifted its focus away from social games, instead working on Microsoft Flight and Kinect shooter game Project Columbia.
On July 25, 2012, Project Columbia and further development on Microsoft Flight were cancelled, with all 35 employees being laid off. On November 29, 2012, the studio was renamed Black Tusk Studios, and tasked with creating a new major franchise for Microsoft Studios to rival their popular Halo franchise.
On January 27, 2014, it was announced that Microsoft had acquired the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games, and that Black Tusk Studios would take on the development of future games in the series.
It looks like Black Tusk was created from scratch by MS after all people from Zipline Studios were laid off. Only the location remained.
I’m with you. I’m sure acquisitions are coming, but don’t really buy any of the rumors until there is hard evidence. But still, it’s fun to speculate.
Not to go too much on an off-topic rant but the Fo76 community is one of the best I’ve ever experienced in any game similar (certainly better than SoT, for example). If you’re ever on and my wife and I are, we’ll be happy to be guides 
I understand the point, but not sure I agree with the logic. Wanting to improve the Windows store, which is universally disliked, should not be mutually exclusive with buying Valve/Steam - especially since there would likely be a delay before the two stores could be integrated to whatever extent they want.
I meant to respond to the two commentators on that point yesterday but got busy with work; Coalition was founded as Microsoft Studios Vancouver. But the overarching point is that the primary reason Satya, Phil, and team are focusing on acquisitions is because each of the studios that were founded took several years to even get their first project out the door. That’s to be expected, but when you’re attempting to fluff release schedules in a subscription service time is not a luxury.
It’s always better to take a rumour with a grain of salt, but I will probably never outright dismiss anything stated in a rumour. (Addendum: if the rumour is from a source with some credibility that is.)
Many doubt that Playstation’s business model isn’t fit for day one release or that they can’t support it like Xbox is doing right now.
This not the case actually.
Sony is in much much better position then Xbox was when Gamepass launched (sony is always in better position)
Releasing day one on a sub was essential for xbox to stay relevant at that time
Sony can simply wait out and launch day one sub service whenever they want.
It’s simply a waiting game for them. They are already leading without having such subscription
Launching day one service is not as hard as everyone thinks
Sony may steal the show when Xbox is the one who did the ground work for gaming sub services
Sony may succed even without having as large as catalogue of Gamepass or they may even charge more then Gamepass and have same quantity of games
Competition just gonna get tough
Sony doesn’t have the money necessary to maintain a subscription model on the same level as gamepass, they’ll never attempt it.
Like others have said, 70$ games should tell you enough of how they need more money to sustain their endeavors.
There are a lot of elements to your discussion that don’t hold much water; the subscription model and the infrastructure required to compete with Xbox is simply not there for Sony. They can’t even get a Smart Delivery-like system to work, their backend for handling metadata (like saves) is atrocious, and plenty of other examples from the last year alone indicate that you may not be looking at the situation with all the information.
Sony using Azure for their games should be plenty enough to understand how they can’t compete against MS infrastructure.
They are not as well positioned in infrastructure and it will be less profitable than Xbox because they have to pay all their cloud services as opposed to it just being at cost. Aside from that Xbox has a major first move advantage.
I agree with some of this. I think it is inevitable that Sony will eventually have a “day and date” subscription service, but I would be surprised if it was a full fledged Game Pass competitor. I suspect it will be smaller scale and focus just on Sony first party games (and some indies perhaps).
The reason for this is simple math. PlayStation first party games do not have a great attach rate. Less than 20% of their console owners are buying even the biggest releases (on average). If they can coax enough of their owners onto a subscription service they will make more than they do on the current model. I don’t know what the magic number is, but I’m sure they do.
FYI, being the “follower” instead of the leader is a viable business strategy in certain situations - especially if the leader is spending lots of money “experimenting” - and if switching costs for customers are low. This actually argues that Sony needs to get their subscription model (once launched) onto as many devices as possible (not just the console) to reduce switching costs for customers.
Did we forget that Microsoft just spent 7.5B (which they made double back in just 3 months) on Bethesda. Microsoft doesn’t have to fear anything, Sony will be too slow and are already too slow when it comes to beating Game Pass.
When my house is shaken off the foundation on some random day in the near future I’ll know Microsoft has announced new acquisitions.
Support studios are critical for massive AAA games and good ones are highly sought after, so it makes sense why Sony would do this.
The problem is that subscription service does not provide the immediate income. That’s the main crux of the matter. Subscription income is the continuous income - you invest 100kk, but you won’t see the return on investment immediately in comparison to direct sales where selling 1kk copies will give you profit.
Sony cannot burn or wait for the money the same way as MS. All the people talking about about Sony’s cash reserves forget that Sony is essentially 4 companies. For 20 years Xbox was almost a hobby for MS while for Sony it was 1/4 of the company. It mirrors Sony’s entrance in gaming market - for Sega or Nintendo it was 1/1 of the company, while for Sony it was 1/3 or something at that time.
Anyway, if they have 40 bln in pure cash SIE will have at most 10-12 bln they can access. Then companies tend to have 3 quarterly incomes (I think?) as the untouchable sum. So it leaves with around 5-6 bn real cash
And this is the ideal situation where we ignore Sony’s debt ratio, hardware division and low profit margins in general.
I dont believe playstation can afford doing a day 1 first party release service, or maybe they could @30$ per month
Imagine Sony waiting months to simply turn a profit from their subscription service while still having to pay giant sums of money to keep it alive. It’ll never ever happen.
Exactly. Netflix has been losing money for years - and the sums it was losing would not be important for MS stakeholders if MS was losing the same amounts. Like at all. And unlike Netflix - MS owns cloud infrastructure so they have less expenses in that too. They also provide cloud infrastructure so their profits grow with the cloud growth which shows no signs of stopping.